


Translation

by tacky_tramp



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mary Being a BAMF, Post "His Last Vow"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacky_tramp/pseuds/tacky_tramp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary reveals another skill that John knows nothing about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Translation

Mary comes home one evening to find John hunched over his laptop and Sherlock sprawled on the couch. “No, no, rewind it,” Sherlock’s saying. His face is pinched in frustrated concentration. “The middle part again, after the Peugeot horn.” John obliges and strident voices play out from the speaker, muffled by fabric and movement.

“What’s that recording?” she asks, kissing John on the top of his head and dropping into her overstuffed chair.

He leans over and speaks quietly so Sherlock can listen uninterrupted. “Kidnapping victim,” he says. “Apparently he’d just been making a call when they grabbed him off the street. Only the line was still open, and a good twenty seconds of their voices ended up on his mum’s machine.”

“Right _then_ ,” Sherlock cries. “That’s ‘bilgisayar.’ ‘Computer.’ But everything around it is nonsense. Rewind!”

John reaches for the laptop again. “Sherlock thinks it sounds like Turkish, but--”

“It’s Laz.”

They both stop and turn to look at her.

“A Caucasian language spoken along the Black Sea,” she explains. She toes off her shoes and leans back, settling in. “Lots of loanwords from Turkish, but it’s a whole different language family. There are less than 25,000 native speakers left. This doesn’t sound like a native speaker, though. Accent’s good but the verb inflection’s a bit off.”

John’s just staring, dumbfounded, but Sherlock’s bolted up, already processing this. “Who would learn it, and where?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. Never heard it spoken in London. There’s a tiny Laz community in Germany.”

“Sunni?”

“Naturally.”

“Hang on,” John interjects. “Can we just rewind to the part where you’re a fucking linguist all of a sudden?”

Mary sighs and folds her hands over her belly. Patiently, she says, “John. You’ve read spy novels, right? Seen spy movies? All the things they do, you should assume I did. All the skills they have, you should assume I have. So if you could stop gaping every time I mention a foreign language or pick a pair of handcuffs, we’ll all save a lot of time.”

He blinks. “You can _pick handcuffs_?”

She looks to Sherlock in mute appeal. He lays a hand on John’s shoulder. “John, you’ve married James Bond. Deal with it.”

John throws up his hands. ”Well, I’ll just make us a pot of tea then, while you two discuss espionage.” He stalks out of the room, muttering under his breath about “bloody verb inflections.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “It’s going to be difficult for him.”

“Of course,” Mary says with a sad smile. “Thank you. For helping. But you know I wasn’t James Bond.” Her smile turns brittle. “He’s one of the good guys.”

Sherlock kneels beside her chair and brushes a light kiss on her temple. She leans into him, her forehead resting on his. Quietly, he says, “Now you are, too.”


End file.
